Searching for Transitologists: Contemporary Theories of ...jlg562/... · transitions literature or, alte rnatively, as transitology. 3 First, advocates of transitology argue that,

320

Post-Soviet Affairs 2004 20 4 pp 320ndash349Copyright copy 2004 by V H Winston amp Son Inc All rights reserved

Searching for TransitologistsContemporary Theories of Post-Communist Transitions and the Myth of a Dominant ParadigmJordan Gans-Morse1

Abstract A political scientist investigates the claim that the field of post-communiststudies is and has been dominated by a transitology paradigm whose teleologicalbiases lead to faulty analysis Based on a comprehensive analysis of post-communistregime change studies published in 10 leading area studies and comparative politicsjournals between 1991 and 2003 as well as a broader review of the post-communisttransition literature this article seeks to clarify the terminological confusion that is aprominent feature of critiques of transitology and to examine the claim that a singlemode of analysis dominates the study of post-communism

he collapse of the Soviet Union presented social scientists with adaunting set of challenges For half a century comparativists in the

fields of political science sociology and development economics hadsought to develop theories capable of explaining transitions from traditionto modernity underdevelopment to development and authoritarianism todemocracy The question naturally arose as to whether these theories ofchange could form the basis for a theory of post-communist transition orwhether a transition away from state socialism required a fundamentallynew and unique theoretical approach

1Doctoral Candidate Department of Political Science University of California Berkeley Theauthor would like to thank the following people for insightful comments and advice onearlier drafts Neil Abrams Taylor Boas George Breslauer Kiren Chaudhry M Steven FishRegine Spector Edward Walker Jane Zavisca and participants at University of TorontorsquosCentre for Russia and East European Studies conference ldquoThe Russian Federation 12 YearsOn Moving Beyond Transitologyrdquo held February 5ndash6 2004 in Toronto

T

SEARCHING FOR TRANSITOLOGISTS 321

Today a decade and a half after the momentous year of 1989 thereexists a widely repeated assumption that two purportedly related theoret-ical traditionsmdashtransitology and modernization theorymdashhave dominatedand distorted the study of post-communist transitions For instanceStephen Cohen one of the most outspoken critics of what he identifies asldquomainstreamrdquo theories of post-communist transition writes that

Since the early 1990s American scholars of post-communist Russiahave enthusiastically embraced a new guiding concept Some-times known as ldquotransitologyrdquo it should be called ldquotransitionol-ogyrdquo in order to underline all its assumptions and implicationshellipTransitionology has become a near-orthodoxymdashas its proponentstell us the ldquostandard farerdquo the prevailing ldquoorganizing themerdquo theldquoway of posing questionsrdquo (Cohen 2000 p 21)

For Cohen this transitology is little more than a rehashed formulation ofmodernization theory ldquoConcepts and theories of modernization have ofcourse long been a major part of Russian studies And for all its newlanguage and social science pretense transitionology is itself little morethan a latter-day version of those old approaches in the field now equatingmodernization solely with a lsquotransition to democracy and free-marketcapitalismrsquordquo (Cohen 1999 p 48) Other critics concur Peter Reddaway andDmitri Glinski for example argue that ldquothe science of lsquotransitologyrsquo wasanother influential offspring of the modernization paradigmrdquo (Reddawayand Glinski 2001 p 64)

Scholars such as Cohen or Reddaway and Glinski may be among themost forceful critics of what they perceive as dominant trends in the studyof post-communist transitions but they are hardly alone Numerous otherobservers also contend that transitology has exerted an unduemdashandunconstructivemdashinfluence on students of post-communism (see egBunce 2000 Burawoy and Verdery 1999 Carothers 2002 Jowitt 1998Kubicek 2000 Saxonberg and Linde 2003 Terry 1993 Verdery 1996Wiarda 2001) These thinkers charge that transitologistsrsquo faith in the appli-cability to the study of post-communism of theories developed in thecontext of other regions and other historical periods leads to an emphasison inappropriate explanatory variables the development of misguidedresearch agendas and the faulty interpretation of empirical evidenceCritics additionally claim that the transitological approach to the study ofpost-communism is infused with a teleological perspective based on theassumption of a single endpoint to historical progression namely liberaldemocracy (see eg Burawoy and Verdery 1999 p 15 Carothers 2002 p7 Cohen 2000 p 23 Gelman 1999 p 943 Pickel 2002 p 108 Stark 1992p 300) This assumption of linear historical progress further distorts tran-sitologistsrsquo analyses given that regression stagnation or multi-lineartracks of development may better characterize the trajectory of post-com-munist transitions

322 JORDAN GANS-MORSE

Is there a basis for such charges If there is are modernization theoryand transitology to blame And should modernization theory and transi-tology so readily be equated Criticsrsquo classifications of broad swaths of thevoluminous and eclectic literature on post-communist transitions underthe rubric of single schools of thought such as modernization theory ortransitology often tend to caricature the target of their disapproval As aresult they falsely create the impression that a loosely related body ofdiverse literature is a coherentmdashyet unsophisticatedmdashapproach to socialscience Moreover many of these critics present claims about ldquomain-streamrdquo thinking while providing references to only one or two citationsIn some instances citations referring to widespread trends in the field pointthe reader back to other critiques of post-communist studies rather than toactual examples of transitology or teleological approaches

Consequently while references to the influence of transitology arewidespread in the literature on post-communism the termrsquos definitionseems to have remained unexplored Transitology has taken on multiplemeanings fostering confusion and muddying already complicateddebates Some critics are explicitly referring to transitology as a body ofliterature developed through the study of democratizing regimes in South-ern Europe and Latin America These thinkers argue that it is the mode ofanalysis developed by these transitologists that is both flawed and hege-monic in post-communist studies (see eg Bunce 1995 Jowitt 1996aJowitt 1996b Terry 1993 Wiarda 2001) But other thinkers imply that thetransitology they object to is not a specific body of literature but rather anapproach to the study of political economic and social change that con-ceptualizes these processes as a transition with a pre-determined endpoint(see eg Burawoy and Verdery 1999 Stark 1992 Stark and Bruszt 1998Verdery 1996) These scholars propose a theory of change based on thenotion of overtly open-ended ldquotransformationrdquo a formulation that high-lights their belief that the word ldquotransitionrdquo is inherently imbued withteleological qualities Still other scholars define their critique of transitol-ogy even more broadly Cohen (2000) presents a sweeping objection to theuse of deductive social science models that fail to account for the unique-ness of the post-communist region He additionally questions whether theword ldquotransitionrdquo which he believes implies progress should be appliedto countries that have experienced political and economic crises ThomasCarothers (2002) raises the issue of whether political systems that are nolonger authoritarian regimes yet have not come to resemble liberal democ-racies should continue to be classified as countries in transit or whether itis time to recognize that the hybrid institutions of many so-called ldquotransi-tion countriesrdquo actually represent a stable equilibrium point rather than astage on the way to further democratization

The present article investigates this terminological confusion with theaim of evaluating the proposition that transitologymdashor any otherapproachmdashdominates the study of post-communism It first examinesdefinitions of modernization theory and transitology by situating thecurrent debates over post-communism in the context of long-enduring


disputes over the study of transitions It then searches for evidence of atransitological approach among scholars of post-communism through acomprehensive analysis of articles published on post-communist regimechange in 10 leading area studies and comparative politics journalsbetween 1991 and 20032 A broader review of the post-communist regimechange literature supplements the survey of journal articles The findingsof this analysis challenge the notion that transitology has been the domi-nant approach to the study of the post-communist transitions at least iftransitology is defined as the literature on democratization that developedout of the study of transitions in Southern Europe and Latin America Areview of the literature instead uncovers a welter of diverse and innovativeapproaches to the study of regime change in post-communism Prominentscholars may have advocated a transitological approach at the outset of thefirst post-communist decade but their proposals served more as a focalpoint for criticism than as a widely-adopted research agenda

The article then addresses other critiques of post-communist studiesthat define transitology more broadly and object to its perceived teleolog-ical qualities A close analysis of the post-communist regime-change liter-ature demonstrates that much of the debate over teleology in the study oftransitions is misplaced Contrary to some criticsrsquo assertions analysts ofpost-communism have rarely expressed the opinion that liberal democracy(or any other regime type) is the singular natural inevitable or evenprobable outcome of transitions Rather contemporary scholars of post-communism are struggling with the same question that has plagued stu-dents of comparative transitions for decades how to most effectivelyutilize generalizable ideal types of regimes and political-economic systemsto understand specific processes of change in a given region Moreover itwill be argued that open-ended conceptions of transformation that somecritics offer in lieu of transitologyrsquos ostensibly teleological tendencies donot necessarily provide superior analytical insights as compared to care-fully formulated theories of closed-ended frameworks that conceive oftransition as movement from one ideal type to another

2These area studies journals include East European Politics and Societies Europe-Asia Studies(Soviet Studies until 1993) Post-Soviet Affairs (Soviet Economy until JulyndashSeptember 1992)Communist and Post-Communist Studies (Studies in Comparative Communism until 1993) andSlavic Review Comparative politics journals included in the survey are World Politics Compar-ative Political Studies Comparative Politics Journal of Politics and the British Journal of PoliticalScience A few words are in order about the scope of this article This analysis is limited toacademic works which leaves open the possibility that a transitological approach wieldsinfluence in the realm of policymaking Without denying such a possibility a survey of theacademic literature is still in order While some of the critiques discussed above are directedpartially at journalists and policymakers they are in many cases aimed explicitly at academicpractitioners of post-communist studies If these critiques can be shown to be inapplicable tothe academic literature this should at least force critics to more cautiously identify the targetsof their attacks Moreover if indeed such a divergence between academic and policyapproaches to the conceptualization of transition can be shown to exist this in and of itselfwould lay the ground for a fertile research agenda on the influence (or lack thereof) ofacademics during the post-communist period


Finally this article concludes with a discussion of the future trajectoryof the study of post-communist regime change As will be shown despitethe wide range of approaches that scholars of post-communism employthere is remarkable agreement on one point the study of post-communismrequires theory building not just theory testing Moreover despite criticsrsquoclaims to the contrary many scholars of post-communism agree that exist-ing theories whether they be modernization theory transitology or someother approach provide only a starting point at best The processes ofchange under way in the post-communist region are fundamentally differ-ent from other forms of transition that social scientists have previouslyencountered some analysts even raise the question of whether theseprocesses are best described as ldquotransitionsrdquo at all or whether some otherguiding metaphor such as revolution institutional breakdown or decolo-nization might be more apt

This process of theory building begins with a reexamination of theanalytical frameworks and terminology that lie at the heart of the studyof post-communist regime change Fruitful discussion of where a fieldshould be headed must be preceded by frank assessments of where it istoday Thus by surveying the basic building blocks of theory that areemerging in recent studies of regime change this article aims to assist inthe difficult process of developing a new and unique theory of post-communist transitions

MODERNIZATION THEORY TRANSITOLOGY AND THEORIES OF POST-COMMUNIST

TRANSITIONS ONE OF A KIND

Evaluation of the prominence of modernization theory or transitologyin the study of post-communist transitions must begin by clearly definingthe theoretical traditions that some claim are the progenitors of post-communist theories of transition A brief examination of the emergence ofthe fields of comparative politics comparative sociology and developmenteconomics in the American academy in the postndashWorld War II period thusprovides context for contemporary disputes in post-communist studiesWith the onset of the Cold War one of the most pressing issues for the Westbecame the development of democracy and capitalism in Europersquos formercolonies and the other countries in what was becoming known as the ThirdWorld In stark contrast to the study of formal institutions that had domi-nated American social science prior to the war the formulation of theoriesof democratic and capitalist transitions became a central objective of post-war academia (Janos 1986 ch 2)

Modernization theory became the dominant paradigm for theseinquiries On the basis of the imported premises of 19th century Europeanpolitical sociology and political economy modernization theorists positedthat changes in the economic base of a society most importantly its modeof production lead to changes in its social structures which in turn


necessitate evolution in the political sphere Thus according to this formu-lation industrialization spurs changes in the division of labor leading tourbanization increased levels of education and new forms of communi-cation technology which then serve as preconditions for the developmentof democratic institutions (Lipset 1960) In its boldest representationsmodernization theory rested on the assumption that this sequence ofeconomic social and then political evolutionmdasha sequence developed fromthe study of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and democracy inthe Westmdashwould be repeated throughout the developing world (Rostow1960)

By the 1960s modernization theory came under broad attack for theseteleological and universalistic claims from thinkers on the Left such as thedependency and world systems theorists (Frank 1972 Wallerstein 1974)as well as from mainstream liberals such as Reinhard Bendix (1977 [1964])But more curious from the perspective of students of post-communismmdashwho often hear of the affinity between transitology and modernizationtheorymdashis that transitology itself was born as a response to modernizationtheory In his 1970 article titled ldquoTransitions to Democracyrdquo often cited asthe grandfather text of transitology Dankwart Rustow (1970) eschewed theidea that the development of democracy depends on a set of economic andsocial preconditions (the one key exception being the precondition ofnational unity defined as a preexisting agreement about the territorialboundaries of the nation-state) He instead elevated the role of humanactors in the process of democratization arguing that democracy resultsfrom a political struggle among factions of elites that concludes upon theldquodeliberate decision on the part of political leaders to accept the existenceof diversity in unity and to that end to institutionalize some crucial aspectof democratic procedurerdquo (Rustow 1970 p 357)

Over a decade later when a group of prominent scholars organizedthe ldquoTransitionsrdquo project a research agenda devoted to the collapse ofauthoritarian rule in Southern Europe and Latin America they found clearinspiration in the process-oriented actor-centric framework of RustowThey rejected the macrostructural explanations that had dominated theliterature on democratization during the era of modernization theory astoo confining pessimistic and ultimately inapplicable to the burst ofunexpected democratization in the 1970s and 1980s

From the ldquoTransitionsrdquo project emerged a series of propositions aboutdemocratization that would structure the debate about regime change inSouthern Europe in Latin America and some would argue eventually inAsia Africa and the post-communist region Summarized in the influen-tial volume by Guillermo OrsquoDonnell and Philippe Schmitter Transitionsfrom Authoritarian Rule Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies(1986) these tenets form the core of what has become known as theldquotransitions literaturerdquo or alternatively as ldquotransitologyrdquo3 First advocatesof transitology argue that with the exception of Rustowrsquos emphasis onnational unity no set of preconditions must exist for democracy to takeroot Democratization is possible although more or less likely in a variety


of structural contexts Second the primary causal variable during transi-tions is elite bargaining and in particular the strategic interaction betweenleaders of the former regime and representatives of the opposition forcesConsequently civil society and the importance of political parties onlycome into play at a relatively late stage in the transition process interna-tional actors take a backseat to domestic factors with regard to transitionoutcomes (OrsquoDonnell and Schmitter 1986) Third different patterns of eliteinteractionmdashor different modes of transitionmdashimpact the prospects fordemocratization and influence the institutional features and quality of thedemocracy that emerges The mode of transition that early transitologistsdeemed most conducive to successful democratization involved formal orinformal bargains These bargains often referred to as pacts sought toneutralize the influence of hardliners within the collapsing authoritarianregime and radicals among the opposition by forging agreements aboutsuch thorny issues as the future of the military or the redistribution ofproperty This emphasis on negotiated transition led to the conclusion thatrevolutionary transitions and high levels of mass mobilization endangerrather than abet the process of democratization (Karl 1990 Karl andSchmitter 1991)4

Ironically just as transitology was dominating the study of regimechange in more southerly reaches of the globe some scholars of commu-nism were promoting a new version of modernization theory shorn of itsmore teleological and ethnocentric premises to explain the liberalizationof the perestroyka period in the late 1980s (Lewin 1988) These scholarsattributed the fall of authoritarian regimes across the globe to macrostruc-tural factors such as increased levels of wealth education and communi-cations technology For example Lucian Pye in his 1990 presidentialaddress to the American Political Science Association referred to the globalldquocrisis of authoritarianismrdquo as ldquothe vindication of modernization theoryrdquoand insisted that ldquothe key factors [pertaining to democratizing trends] wereall identified as critical variables by the early modernization and politicaldevelopment theoristsrdquo (Pye 1990 p 7)

Thus on the cusp of the Eastern Blocrsquos collapse as Sovietologistsstruggled to keep up with rapidly changing events modernization theoryand transitology stood as two distinct approaches to the study of regimechange Yet despite these evident distinctions between modernization

3 Although this literature is often referred to as the ldquodemocratization literaturerdquo as well thisinterchangeable use of the terms ldquotransitionrdquo and ldquodemocratizationrdquo is misleading as will bediscussed later in this article4 This depiction of transitology must be qualified Transitology is in the recent words of oneof the key scholars of the original ldquoTransitionsrdquo project ldquoa large and uneven body of workrdquo(OrsquoDonnell 2002 p 6) Many of the above propositions have been challenged or modified byprominent analysts of recent transitions including many of the initial transitologists them-selves Still the representation of transitology provided here follows the interpretation ofinfluential scholars of transition (McFaul 2002 Bunce 2003 Collier 1999) that depictstransitology as a method of studying transition characterized by an actor-centric elite bargain-ing approach


theory and transitology many critics argue that these two schools ofthought are bound together by shared assumptions of a teleological faithin the inevitability of liberal democracy and a belief in the possibility ofdeveloping transition theories that remain robust across space and timeMoreover critics insist that elements of these two theoriesmdashand especiallytransitologymdashdominate the study of post-communism obscuring theuniqueness of the post-communist region Having defined the terms inquestion it is now possible to assess these claims

SEARCHING FOR TRANSITOLOGISTS

Throughout the literature on post-communism scholars refer to thetransitological approach as the ldquonear orthodoxyrdquo (Cohen 2000 p 21) theldquocorrect linerdquo (as the title of Jowitt [1998] indicates) and ldquohegemonicrdquo(Bunce 2000 p 721) its critics feel compelled to develop new theories tocounterbalance ldquoso much fashionable transitologyrdquo (Verdery 1996 p 16)Nor is the impression that the field must escape the grasp of transitologysubsiding as indicated by recent article titles such as ldquoBeyond the Transi-tology-Area Studies Debaterdquo (Saxonberg and Linde 2003) and ldquoSouthernEurope Eastern Europe and Comparative Politics Transitology and theNeed for New Theoryrdquo (Wiarda 2001) Is transitology or modernizationtheory as prevalent as some critics insist

This section tests these propositions through a comprehensive analysisof articles published on post-communist regime change between 1991 and2003 in 10 leading area studies and comparative politics journals Follow-ing other surveys of the literature on post-communism (Kubicek 2000) Ibegin this survey in 1991 to provide a ldquolagrdquo time for scholarship to catchup to the rapidly changing events of the late 1980s During this period therewere 100 articles on post-communist regime change published in areastudies journals and an additional 31 published in the comparative jour-nals5 Recognizing that the influence of individual works varies I supple-ment this quantitative analysis with a broader review of the literature thatexplores more fully the influence of prominent scholars

A Quantitative Review of the Literature

Table 1 summarizes several noteworthy findings First the majority ofarticles published on post-communist regime change in this sample bearno mark of a transitological approach if transitology is understood as theliterature that first emerged out of the study of democratization in SouthernEurope and Latin America They make no reference to major works on

5Articles that pertain tangentially to regime change but are devoted primarily to otherissuesmdashpolitical culture mass attitudes elite turnover specific political events the develop-ment of particular institutions or the relationships between political and economic reformsmdashhave not been included unless they make an explicit attempt to contribute to the study ofregime change more broadly


transitology and do not adopt the terminology key methodological andtheoretical assumptions or research agenda that would be expected if theauthors had used the transitions literature as the basis for theorizing post-communist transitions There is also little evidence that modernizationtheory plays a prominent role in the current discourse on post-communistregime change Of the 131 articles analyzed here only 11 explicitly discussmodernization theory of these all but two (Tedin 1994 Vassilev 1999)question whether the tenets of modernization theory provide a sufficientstarting point for analyzing the collapse of Eastern Bloc nations and theformation of new regimes Instead of relying on transitology or modern-ization theory scholars of post-communist transitions have utilized aneclectic array of analytical approaches These draw inspiration from think-ers ranging from Pierre Bourdieu (Pollack 2002) to Herbert Spencer (Janos1991) adopt comparative perspectives based on cases outside of the ldquoThirdWaverdquo studied by transitologists such as 19th century Europe or America(Jasiewicz 2000 Young 1992) and propose new analytical frameworks inwhich the explanations for regime-change outcomes vary from geography(Kopstein and Reilly 2000) to the development of civil society (Fish 1999)

A second notable finding is that a significant number of the scholarswho explicitly discuss transitology do so not to promote its application butrather to make clear that they find the transitological approach inapplicableor insufficient for analyzing the key questions of post-communism Theyquestion its emphasis on domestic variables noting that external factorsmdashthe collapse of Soviet hegemony in the region and the Westrsquos subsequentpromotion of democracy and capitalismmdashplayed a much more significantrole in post-communist transitions than in the cases of Southern Europeanand Latin American regime change (Brown 2000 Janos 1994 Janos 2001Steves 2001) Other skeptics argue that the original transitology literaturedeveloped in ethnically homogeneous regions fails to provide a basis foranalyzing the ethnic diversity and unresolved issues of national identityprevalent in post-communist cases of regime change (Roeder 1999) Manyscholars of post-communism further agree that the focus on national elitesfound in the transitology literature is ill-suited for study of the post-communist region where the role of mass movements and protests (Ekiertand Kubik 1998 Waylen 1994) collective actors such as trade unions(Kubicek 2002) and sub-national politics (Hughes 1997 Kubik 1994Ross 2000) figured prominently in the collapse of the Eastern Bloc

Finally some skeptics of transitology argue that it provides no frame-work for analyzing the new breeds of authoritarianism emerging in thepost-communist region Whereas the cases of regime change studied bythe original transitologists were grouped together as instances of democ-ratization the cases of regime change in the post-communist region becamea unified set due to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc Many of the post-communist states soon diverged on a trajectory that resembled more atransition from state socialism to a new form of authoritarianism thana transition to democracy (Roeder 1994 Way 2003) Thus to talk ofldquodemocratizationrdquo across the region is a misnomer and studies of post-


communist regime change must develop theories of multi-track transitionsto both authoritarianism and democracy (Brown 2000)

The survey shows that of the 66 articles that explicitly refer to transi-tology only 22 use transitology as a starting point for their study of post-communist regime change However even this statistic overstates thesupport for transitology among scholars of post-communism Fifteen ofthese 22 works modify the assumptions underlying the original works of

Table 1 Trends in the Study of Post-Communist Regime Changea

Area- studiesjournals

Comparativejournals Total

Total number of articles on regime change 100 31 131Number of articles with explicit reference to ldquotransitions literaturerdquo

48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)

Of these articlesmdashNumber of articles critical of the applica-bility of the ldquotransitions literaturerdquo to the study of post-communist regime change

30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)

Number of articles that use the ldquotransi-tions literaturerdquo as starting point foranalyzing post-communist regime change

13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)

Number of articles focused on specific topics related to transitology such as the ldquotorturers dilemmardquo or civil society issues (see p 330)

5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)

Number of articles with explicit reference to modernization theory

6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)

Of these articlesmdashNumber of articles critical of the applica-bility of modernization theory to the study of post-communist regime change

5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)

Number of articles that use modernization theory as starting point for analyzing post-communist regime change

1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)

Number of articles that emphasize ldquolegacy approachrdquo in the study of post-communist regime change

4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)

Number of articles that analyze post-communist regime change as revolution

12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)

aThere are overlaps among some of these categories For instance some articles thatexplicitly reject transitology are the same articles that advocate a legacy approach somearticles that reject transitology similarly find modernization theory to be an inadequatestarting point for theorizing post-communism and so on


transitology so extensively that in many cases it becomes difficult to drawa clear line between the work of these authors and the scholarship oftransitologyrsquos critics While borrowing various aspects of the transitologi-cal approach these 15 authors integrate the role of the international system(Agh 1999 Pridham 2002 Pridham 1999) ethnicity and nationalism(Bibic 1993 Cichok 2002 Leff 1999) mass movements and civil society(Friedheim 1993 McFaul 2002) sub-national politics (Gelman 1999) andnew forms of authoritarianism (McFaul 2002) into their analyses

In addition to turning their attention to variables understudied in theoriginal works of transitology scholars who have built on the edifice oftransitology have often synthesized the transitological approach with othertheoretical frameworks Several scholars have combined the ldquolegacyapproachrdquo most often associated with the work of Ken Jowitt (1992) withanalysis of modes of transition from state socialism focusing on howspecific cultural or institutional legacies of communist systems structurepossibilities for elite interactions during transitions (Bernhard 1996 Craw-ford and Lijphart 1995 OrsquoNeil 1996 Zhang 1994) Others have utilizedmodels developed by the field of Sovietology in conjunction with conceptsborrowed from the transitology literature (Karklins 1994) Such analysesseek to strike a balance between the voluntarism sometimes associatedwith transitology and the determinism of structuralist outlooks

Finally as can be seen in Table 1 there are a handful of scholars whouse the transitology literature not to develop a full-blown theory of transi-tion but to address specific problems related to regime change discussedby major transitologists most notably the questions of how best to dealwith former leaders of the old regime (Huntingtonrsquos ldquotorturer problemrdquo)(Huntington 1991 ch 5) or what the role of civil society during transitionshould be (OrsquoDonnell and Schmitter 1986 ch 5) However these scholarstoo often reject or extensively modify the findings of transitology withregard to these issues emphasizing the differences between the post-communist cases and other instances of regime change rather than thesimilarities

Overall out of the 131 articles in the sample a mere seven (Bova 1991Korbonski 1999 Munck and Leff 1997 Schmitter and Karl 1994 Schmitterand Karl 1995 Tedin 1994 Welsh 1994)6 directly utilize or advocate atransitological approach to the study of the post-communist region orcompare post-communist cases to transitions in Southern Europe LatinAmerica or other ldquoThird Waverdquo democracies without the significant mod-ifications discussed above It is therefore difficult to understand why somescholars of post-communism continue to warn the field in recent publica-tions that ldquoWe need to sort out which insights from studying SouthernEurope and Latin America are useful and which are less so certainly nowholesale mindless application of the transitologyconsolidology litera-

6Munck and Leff (1997) it should be noted was part of a special issue dedicated to DankwartRustow its transitological perspective therefore should not be surprising


ture to EastCentral Europe is appropriaterdquo (Wiarda 2001 p 486) If theevidence shows that the vast majority of scholars of post-communismagree that transitology should not serve as the basis for theorizing post-communist transitions then why does such a widespread perception oftransitologyrsquos dominance continue to persist To explore this question abroader review of the debates surrounding the application of transitologyto the post-communist cases is necessary

A Qualitative Review of the Literature

At the start of the 1990s the question of whether the transitionsoccurring in the former Eastern Bloc could be considered continuations ofpolitical trends seen in other recent processes of democratization loomedlarge As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted in its June 19 1991 issueldquoThe analogy between Eastern Europe and Latin America is one of the mostchic themes in academia todayrdquo (cited in Croan et al 1992 p 44) High-profile scholars such as Samuel Huntington (1991) Adam Przeworski(1991) and Giuseppe di Palma (1990)7 published books at the beginning ofthe 1990s that treated the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 as part ofa global tendency toward democratization Meanwhile Russell Bovaattracted significant attention with his claim that the perestroyka era couldbe studied as a sub-category of the broader process of transition fromauthoritarian rule and his call for a ldquomore comparative approach to theissue of post-communist transitions in generalrdquo (Bova 1991 p 114) How-ever it should be noted that Bova could hardly be considered an advocateof ldquomindlessrdquo application of transitology literature to the post-communistcases First in his controversial article he reviewed both the transitologicalapproach as well as the structural preconditions-to-democracy literatureand called for a synthesis of the two in the study of post-communism (Bova1991 p 127) Second he divided the process of transition into two partsmdashthe breaking down of authoritarian rule and the creation of a new regimemdashand noted that it was perhaps only the former to which the processes ofliberalization studied by the transitologists in other regions could be seenas parallel (Bova 1991 p 126) a claim with which even some critics oftransitology have agreed (Terry 1993)

Writing in 1991 Bova noted that approaches to the study of transitionborrowed from Latin America had barely been applied by students of whatwas becoming post-communism However the situation had apparentlychanged to such a degree by 1993 that Sarah Meiklejohn Terry perceivedherself to be playing ldquodevilrsquos advocaterdquo and proposing some ldquoheresiesrdquowhen she argued that post-communist transitions are different from LatinAmerican democratization and require new analytical approaches (Terry

7It should be noted however that in other works Di Palma (1991) explicitly recognized thatthe transitions in Eastern Europe were different processes of change than had been observedin Latin America and Southern Europe and that contemporary social science models mayprove inadequate for the study of post-communist transitions


1993 p 333) A year later Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl addedto the impression that transitologists were invading the field of post-communist studies when they claimed that ldquoThe neophyte practitioners oftransitology and consolidology have tended to regard the implosion of theSoviet Union and the regime changes in eastern Europe with lsquoimperialintentrsquordquo (Schmitter and Karl 1994 p 177) In their influential essay ldquoTheConceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists How Far to theEast Should They Attempt to Gordquo Schmitter and Karl questioned whetherthe post-communist cases were similar enough to democratizing regimesin other parts of the globe as to make the application of the transitologyliterature fruitful They concluded that to explore this question scholarsmust first incorporate the post-communist transitions into the ldquoThirdWaverdquo cases and only then pass judgment on the differences and similari-ties between the post-communist bloc and other regions

In some ways Schmitter and Karlrsquos ambitious research agenda seemedto set the stage for an onslaught of transitology-based research but nosooner had the proposal been made than prominent scholars of post-communism vigorously rejected the utility of seeking similarities betweencases where it can be seen ex ante that few exist Valerie Bunce (1995)following Terryrsquos lead elucidated numerous ways in which the transitionsin the post-communist states differ from earlier transitions studied by thetransitologists First she noted that transition in Eastern Europe and theformer Soviet Union entails laying the foundations for a major economictransformation a component of transition unseen in the cases studied bythe early transitologists Second she pointed to the difference between thenature of authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe and Latin America andthe totalitarian states of the Eastern Bloc which promised to leave muchlonger-lasting undemocratic legacies Third she called for attention to theunique mode of transition in the post-communist context where unlikethe pacted transitions orchestrated by elites in many significant cases ofprevious democratization mass mobilization of the populaces and theagenda of national liberation from the Soviet Unionrsquos hegemony haveplayed significant roles Finally she emphasized the major changes thathad taken place in the international economic and political system betweenthe 1980s and 1990s Unlike the stable bi-polar system in which the Westencouraged democratization in Southern Europe and Latin America as partof its larger Cold War goals the post-communist transitions began duringa period in which the international system itself was very much in flux8 Inproposing a research agenda based on comparison between the post-communist cases rather than interregional comparison Bunce posed thequestion ldquoAre we comparing apples with apples apples with oranges(which are at least varieties of fruits) or apples with say kangaroosrdquo(Bunce 1995 p 112) a remark that has been cited many times over in post-communist studies

8To be fair Schmitter and Karl (1994) also noted many of these differences


As the findings from the analysis of journal articles presented abovesuggest Bunce appears to have gotten the better of the debate Scholars ofpost-communism exhibit widespread agreement on the uniqueness of thepost-communist cases and express skepticism about the applicability oftransitology to the study of post-communism Other than the handful ofarticles previously mentioned there have been few attempts to carry outthe research agenda proposed by Schmitter and Karl of incorporating thepost-communist cases into the literature on transitology the one majorexception being Juan Linz and Alfred Stepanrsquos high-profile study Problemsof Democratic Transition and Consolidation Southern Europe South Americaand Post-Communist Europe (1996) It is noteworthy that in this study Linzand Stepan draw attention to similar points of post-communist uniquenessthat Bunce herself noted such as the role of international influences andthe legacies of totalitarianism in their case studies of Eastern EuropeIndeed they note upfront that ldquoIn the process [of incorporating the post-communist cases into the study] we were forced to recast and rethink muchof the transition and consolidation literature that we have been so involvedwith since the mid-1970srdquo (Linz and Stepan 1996 p xvii)9

It is thus clear that a significant revision of the widespread assumptionthat transitology dominates the study of post-communism is necessary Tobe sure at the outset of post-communism influential scholars of compar-ative politics seemed poised to present post-communist regime change asa process analogous to the democratization that had been occurring inmany parts of the globe since the mid-1970s However prominent thinkerswith expertise in the post-communist region who wielded considerableinfluence of their own questioned this approach at every opportunity (mostnotably Bunce 1995 Bunce 1998 Bunce 2000 Bunce 2003 Jowitt 1996aJowitt 1996b Jowitt 1998) By the mid- to late 1990s the clear majority ofstudents of post-communism were proclaiming that theoreticalapproaches beyond transitology were required for studies of regimechange in the former Eastern Bloc even though advocates of transitologymdashespecially in an unmodified formmdashwere few and far between Theorists ofpost-communist transitions as discussed above have utilized a wide rangeof approaches and have shown flexibility and imagination in their attemptsto synthesize multiple theoretical frameworks this plethora of approachesbelies the notion that a hegemonic discourse based on transitology existsin post-communist studies

This again raises the question of why the impression that transitolo-gists abound continues to persist among scholars of post-communismSeveral explanations are plausible First it appears that the vocal criticismdirected at transitology and the oft-repeated assertions that transitology

9 Post-communist area studies specialists have also noted that Linz and Stepan (1996) shouldnot be considered a ldquotraditionalrdquo work of transitology Charles King (2000 p 157) remarksthat Linz and Stepan revised many of transitologyrsquos original assumptions in their recentwork Saxonberg and Linde (2003 p 10) similarly praise Linz and Stepan for droppinguniversalistic assumptions and modifying earlier approaches to the study of transitions


dominates the study of post-communism have created the illusion thatnumerousmdashbut usually unnamedmdashadvocates of transitology exist eventhough in reality scholars of post-communism share a near consensus thattransitology is an insufficient basis for new theories of post-communisttransition It is the critics of transitology themselves rather than a phalanxof transitologists who have kept the discourse about transitology alive inthe field Second as mentioned above the conflation of transitology withother theories of change such as modernization theory (Cohen 1999 p 48Reddaway and Glinski 2001 p 64) or neoliberalism (Burawoy and Verd-ery 1999 p 4 Cellarius and Staddon 2002) multiplies the contexts inwhich critics of ldquotransitologyrdquo find cause to use the term Third transitol-ogy has become a buzzword in the debates over area studies versuscomparative approaches When area specialists describe the infringementof comparative techniques on their domain transitology given its pseudo-scientific sounding name is often one of the first examples named eventhough these critiques are directed more broadly at social scienceapproaches with aspirations to develop generalizable theories (see egBernhard 2000 Saxonberg and Linde 2003 p 5) This too has raised theprofile of transitology adding to the impression that it is prevalent in thefield of post-communist studies

Finally as discussed in the introduction to this article critics of ldquomain-streamrdquo theories of post-communist transition appear to be using the termldquotransitologyrdquo in a multitude of ways As a consequence the term finds aniche in discourses other than the discussions of the transitions literatureanalyzed so far In order to fully evaluate the claim that transitologydominates post-communist studies it is necessary to explore the othercontexts in which the term is being used

OPEN-ENDED TRANSFORMATION VS TELEOLOGICAL TRANSITION

The debates over transitology as it emerged out of the study of democ-ratizing regimes in Southern Europe and Latin America have been con-ducted in large part among political scientists More recently sociologistsand anthropologists led by thinkers such as David Stark (1992) MichaelBurawoy (2001) Katherine Verdery (1996) and Burawoy and Verdery(1999) have injected a reformulated notion of transitology into the debatesover post-communism These critics broadly refer to ldquoconventional transi-tologyrdquo as those theories of transition ldquocommitted to some pregiven future[such as capitalism and democracy] or rooted in an unyielding past [suchas totalitarianism]rdquo (Burawoy and Verdery 1999 p 4) Such teleologicalapproaches they argue emphasize the characteristics of democracy andcapitalism that post-communist countries continue to lackmdashwhat Bura-woy has termed ldquodeficit modelsrdquo of analysis (Burawoy 2001 p 270)mdashinstead of focusing analysis on the actual features that post-communistcountries exhibit An assumption of progress and forward movement


comes to underlie assessments of post-communist events whereas inactuality the economic and political crises that have shaken many post-communist countries could more aptly be conceived as regression or atleast stagnation Moreover unlike the transitology previously discussedthis form of transitology pertains not only to frameworks for the study ofregime change but pervades scholarsrsquo thinking about post-communistpolitics and economics more generally When studying political partieselectoral institutions civil society organizations or privatized enterprisesanalysts compare their findings with expectations of what these institu-tions and organizations would look like in a consolidated democracy andmarket economy They then may use this analysis to evaluate the prospectsof a countryrsquos transition to democracy and capitalism as opposed toseeking to understand the particular and potentially unique functions thatthese institutions and organizations perform in the post-communist region

To counter this form of transitology these critics propose a conceptionof post-communist change as open-ended ldquotransformationrdquo that by reject-ing any conception of a presumed endpoint to transition forces analysts tofocus on present events and to evaluate empirical evidence without thebias that potentially results from the belief that a country is on a transitiontrack to a given outcome As Verdery explains ldquoIn my opinion to assumethat we are witnessing a transition from socialism to capitalism democracyor market economies is mistaken I hold with hellip others who see the decadeof the 1990s as a time of transformation in the countries that have emergedfrom socialism these transformations will produce a variety of forms someof them perhaps approximating Western capitalist market economies andmany of them nothellip When I use the word lsquotransitionrsquo then I put it inquotes so as to mock the naivete of so much fashionable transitologyrdquo[italics in original] (Verdery 1996 pp 15ndash16)

This broad definition of transitology as an approach to the study oftransitions that exhibits teleological qualities dovetails with other criticsrsquoassertions that the transitology discussed in the earlier sections of thisarticle is itself teleological naively assuming that transitions from author-itarianism entail progress toward a single endpointmdashliberal democracy(Carothers 2002 p 7 Cohen 2000 p 23 Gelman 1999 p 943 Pickel 2002p 108) As with the common assumption about the dominance of transi-tology this claim that a teleological outlook pervades scholarly thinkingabout post-communism has gone largely unchallenged and unexaminedRarely do critics provide specific examples of scholarship that exhibitsthese teleological tendencies normdashwith the important exception of theproponents of a ldquotransformationrdquo approach noted abovemdashdo they usuallydefine what they mean by teleological thinking or explain why it inherentlyleads to faulty analysis Consequently an assessment of these assertionsmust begin by exploring the meaning of ldquoteleologyrdquo

According to the American Heritage Dictionary teleology is defined asa ldquobelief in or the perception of purposeful development toward an endas in nature or historyrdquo10 Thus teleological thinking according to thisdefinition would presumably refer to analysis based on a conception of


history as evolution toward a final end state Such a view would framedemocracy andor capitalism as naturalmdashperhaps even inexorablemdashout-comes of historical progression Telltale marks of this type of analysis mightmanifest as unfounded optimism about democracyrsquos prospects based ona belief that liberal democracy was an inevitable victor over socialismowing to its moral or economic superiority

If this is what critics mean by teleology then these charges should bedismissed outright The survey of the literature on post-communist regimechange presented above did not uncover a single work that would fall intothis category11 Scholars of post-communist regime change on average havebeen remarkably cautious if not downright pessimistic with regard totheir predictions concerning the prospects of democracy and capitalism inthe post-communist region They have recognized the possibility of mul-tiple outcomes of transition including the revival of authoritarianism newforms of hybrid regimes or some entirely unpredictable turn of eventsPhilip Roederrsquos guarded analysis is representative of many scholarsrsquo think-ing on the outcomes of post-communist transitions ldquoBy 1999 successfulnational democratic and capitalist transformation had taken place in ninecountries [out of 28 in the post-communist region] This is not to claim thatthere cannot be setbacks in future decades or that all states are marchingtoward some common future Instead this simply indicates that a ratherextraordinary change has taken place in some of these statesmdashat least forthe momentrdquo (Roeder 1999 p 748)12

While there is no evidence supporting the contention that scholars ofpost-communism tend to view liberal democracy as an inevitable or singleoutcome of transition critics such as Stark Burawoy and Verdery arecorrect that much of the discourse on post-communism is framed as atransition to democracy and capitalism as opposed to the more open-endedformulation of a transition from socialism13 It strains credulity to imaginethat scholars who refer to a transition to democracy truly believe in theinevitability or ease of democratization but the transformation theoristsrsquo

10Source available at Dictionarycom (httpdictionaryreferencecom)11Outside of the journal survey the broader literature review identified only one work thatexhibited notable optimism about the ease of democratization and the naturalness of democ-racy as a mode of government (see Mueller 1996)12Even if the original transitologists had exerted a significant influence on the study of post-communism it is not clear why this would have been a source of teleological thinkingOrsquoDonnell and Schmitter (1986 p 3) open with an unambiguously open-ended definition oftransition that bears a remarkable resemblance to the ldquotransformationrdquo approach ldquoThepresent volume deals with transitions from certain authoritarian regimes toward an uncer-tain lsquosomething elsersquo That lsquosomethingrsquo can be the instauration of a political democracy or therestoration of a new and possibly more severe form of authoritarian rule The outcome canalso be simply confusionrdquo Other prominent transitologists have been similarly careful towarn that democracy is by no means the only outcomemdashnor even the likely outcomemdashoftransitions (see Huntington 1991 pp 14ndash26 Linz and Stepan 1996 p xiii) Once again itappears that thinkers such as Verdery are using a different definition of transitology whenthey refer to its widespread teleological tendencies


critique nonetheless merits serious attention Choices of terminology andanalytical frameworks undeniably affect the way scholars design theirinquiries Framing processes of change in the post-communist region astransitions to liberal democracy means that liberal democracy becomes thepredominant point of reference to which processes institutions and eventsin the post-communist region are compared even if scholars routinelysupply the caveat that there is nothing inevitable about the emergence ofdemocracy in transition countries The questions raised by the transforma-tion theorists therefore force analysts to reexamine whether liberal democ-racy is in fact the most apt benchmark for their studies of post-communistcountries or whether the focus on comparisons to liberal democraciesleads scholars to misinterpret the unique features of post-communism

Thus it becomes clear that debates over teleology in post-communiststudies have been misleading Rather than continuing disputes over theinevitability or naturalness of democratization and the singularity of tran-sitionsrsquo outcomes a more nuanced inquiry is needed concerning the ques-tion of whether post-communist change should be theorized as open-ended transformation or as a process of transition from one ideal type regimeor socio-economic system to another a closed-ended conception In thisrespect it is worth noting that this question arises whenever social scien-tists examine transitions For instance in his classic 1964 critique of mod-ernization theory Reinhard Bendix addressed the issue of whether scholarsof Third World development could fruitfully utilize frameworks based onthe study of Western European transitions from tradition to modernity orwhether entirely new and potentially open-ended frameworks wouldfoster better analysis He addressed the question of teleology head onquestioning whether ldquoterms like lsquodevelopmentrsquo or lsquotransitionrsquo are misno-mers when applied to societies whose future condition may not be mark-edly different from the presentrdquo (Bendix 1977 [1964] p 395) A similardivide between transformation and transition approaches can be seen inthe debates over globalization where some analysts conceive of globaliza-tion as a closed-ended process of transition resulting in a global market andborderless world while other analysts agree that massive change is occur-ring but insist that it should be studied as an open-ended phenomenon(Held et al 1999)

For all of these debates the vital question remains whether the trans-formation approach avoids the pitfalls of the transition frameworkdescribed above According to dictionary definitions it is true that atransition entails a ldquopassage from one form state style or place to

13It should be noted however that in works devoted specifically to the study of regimechange scholars of post-communist transitions often do make this distinction following theexample of OrsquoDonnell and Schmitter (1986 ch 1) who distinguish between liberalization anddemocratization It is when scholars write more generally about other topicsmdashsuch aspolitical parties electoral institutions civil society and so onmdashin the context of transition thatthey tend to be less sensitive to the distinction between transitions to democracy andtransitions from authoritarianism


anotherrdquo A transformation in contrast connotes only a ldquomarked changeas in appearance or character usually for the betterrdquo14 Thus while the termldquotransformationrdquo does not necessarily discard an intimation of progress itdoes appear to be more open-ended By emphasizing the open-endednessof political and economic change transformation theorists shift the focusof analysis as any assumption of forward movement is abandoned Regres-sion or stagnation are transformed from pit stops on the track to a precon-ceived destination and instead become the central framework forinvestigation In this vein many of the proponents of the transformationapproach have not drawn parallels between post-communist regimes andmodern political systems but have instead pointed to the reemergence offeudal-like structures (Burawoy 2001 Verdery 1996)15 Verdery forinstance claims that this decomposition of the national state and thedevelopment of semi-feudal suzerainties becomes especially apparentupon examination of the murky property rights battles underlying post-communist privatization the turf wars of organized crime syndicates andthe loss of centralized control over the judicial system and law enforcementagencies (Verdery 1996 ch 8) Like all analogies comparisons of post-communism to feudal systems become useless if pushed too far They dohowever provide a powerful and startling counter-image to the notion thatpost-communist countries are on a progressive path to capitalism andliberal democracy and this is presumably what their proponents findvaluable first and foremost

As such the transformation approach should be lauded as a usefulcautionary reminder that it is vital for social scientists to continuallyreevaluate their underlying assumptions about the trajectory of a systemundergoing transition and to view with skepticism frameworks of analysisthat utilize a single ideal type as the reference point for analysis of post-communist events However beyond this it is not clear that a transforma-tion approach is a superior theoretical framework to a carefully formulatedclosed-ended conception of transition It is of course true that an assump-tion that a transition is headed to a predetermined endpoint can lead tofaulty analysis if this assumption is unfounded But this does not rule outthe possibility of using a transition framework as an analytical construct (asdistinguished from a statement about empirical trends) In this sense theendpoint of transition exists only as a hypothetical idea that allows atheorist to conduct analysis through the comparison of current institutionsand structures with a theorized ideal type of a future regime or political-economic system it by no means implies or assumes that a given countrywill actually come to approximate this ideal type just as liberal democracyin the West does not perfectly represent its ideal type

14See the American Heritage Dictionary at Dictionarycom (httpdictionaryreferencecom)15While sociologists and anthropologists have been more prone to accept this view notableeconomists and political scientists have also noted the similarities between post-communismand feudalism See Ericson (2001) and Bunce (1999b p 792)


Indeed while thinkers like Burawoy and Verdery reject the ldquodeficitmodelsrdquo that analyze post-communist systems in terms of which charac-teristics of democracy and capitalism they lack rather than which charac-teristics they actually exhibit they nonetheless propose an alternativeframeworkmdasha transition to ldquofeudalismrdquomdashin order to highlight these actu-ally-existing traits This seems to imply the difficultymdashif not the impossi-bilitymdashof theorizing transition without a framework that includes someconception of a theoretical (but not actual) endpoint In fact it was Bendixwho pointed out several decades ago that it is the very use of ideal-typesequences of transition to a theoretical endpoint that makes the recognitionof particularity and uniqueness possible Writing of the applicability to thestudy of non-Western countries of the ideal-type sequence derived fromthe Western experience of the shift from feudalism to capitalism he pro-moted the use of such a sequence ldquoas an analytical tool to show how andwhy actual historical developments deviate from itrdquo But he forcefullywarned that such sequences should not be used to ldquomake contingentpredictions about the future of lsquodevelopingrsquo societiesrdquo (Bendix 1977 [1964]p 394)

In short perhaps critics of teleological theories of transition should notposit an entirely open-ended transformation Instead following Bendix amore moderate approach could emphasize the need to continuouslyreevaluate the question of which ideal type a theorist should adopt whenanalyzing a given transition as well as the importance of not confoundingtheoretical models of ideal type endpoints with the notion that realexisting systems actually move along teleological unilinear paths Athoughtful theorist would undoubtedly refer to ideal types other thanliberal democracymdashsuch as feudalism and new forms of authoritarian-ismmdashso as to avoid the assumption that democracy is the most likelyoutcome of transition16 This approach seems to capture the indeterminacyinherent in the process of transition that transformation theorists rightlyemphasize while retaining the theoretical constructs that make possibleboth recognition of uniqueness and particularity as well as comparisons oftransitions across space and time

These difficult theoretical challenges indicate that the debate overteleology in post-communist studies is misplaced Contrary to the claimsof critics there are very few scholars who construct unsophisticated modelsof transition based on the belief that countries across the post-communistregion are inevitably progressing toward a single destination of liberaldemocracy if this is what critics mean by transitology then once again it

16However even such cautious utilization of ideal types by no means resolves all issuesrelated to the question of how ideal types should be employed Does an ideal type refer to theaverage set of institutional characteristics observed in already-existing democracies andauthoritarian regimes Or should it be considered a normative statement concerning desiredinstitutional features of democracy and the lack thereof in authoritarian regimes Thesequestions are raised by Guillermo OrsquoDonnell (1996 p 37) in his insightful discussion ofteleology and ideal types


is not apparent that a transitology framework dominates the post-commu-nist studies field Rather all scholars of post-communism are strugglingwith the common problem of what comparative reference point to employin order to better understand the political processes under way in the post-communist world and how to cautiously and critically utilize such refer-ence points without falling prey to misguided teleological assumptionsThese are not easily resolvable challenges as evidenced by the fact thattheorists of transition have been struggling with similar questions at leastsince Bendixrsquos time Just as theorists of communist legacies are correct toemphasize that the present cannot be understood without analysis of thepast transformation theorists are correct to warn that those who are toofocused on an idealized future fail to grasp the particularities and unique-ness of contemporary post-communism However analysis that reliesexclusively on the past and present remains incomplete Understanding ofparticularity and difference requires comparison and for this scholarsmust continue to examine ideal types of possiblemdashthough certainly notinevitablemdashfuture outcomes of transition

CONCLUSION TRANSITIONING FROM THE TRANSITOLOGY DEBATES

Competing definitions of ldquotransitologyrdquo have multiplied the contextsin which the term is used thereby contributing to the widespread impres-sion that a transitological approach to the study of regime change domi-nates post-communist studies Lack of clarity about the termrsquos meaninghas additionally obscured the target of criticsrsquo reproaches The evidencepresented in this article shows that there is no basis for claims that scholarsof post-communist regime change have embraced transitology at least iftransitology is defined as the method of studying regime change developedby prominent students of Southern European and Latin American transi-tions Meanwhile critics who define transitology more broadly as a teleo-logical approach to the study of transitions have raised importantquestions about the assumptions underlying the terminological and ana-lytical frameworks widely employed in the post-communist studies fieldIt is not clear however that their transformation approach is a superioranalytical framework to a carefully constructed conceptualization ofclosed-ended transition Overall continued discussion of transitologyrsquosdeleterious effects on the study of post-communism merely serves todetract attention from the common goal shared by the majority of scholarsin the field of post-communist studies to move beyond modernizationtheory and transitology in order to build new theory

This shared quest to develop new analytical frameworks raises a finalquestion about the definition of transitology Some scholars refer to transi-tology even more broadly than the transformation theorists Cohen forinstance objects to the very notion that countries like Russia are experienc-ing ldquotransitionsrdquo He argues that ldquoThe history of post-communist Russia


hardly fits the imagery of a country lsquoin transitrsquo to a progressive politicaland economic destination Indeed it does not look like any kind of forwardlsquotransitionrsquo in Russiarsquos developmenthellip If it looks like regression againwhy call it lsquoreformrsquo or lsquoprogressrsquordquo (Cohen 2000 p 39) Likewise Carothers(2002) while not challenging the utility of a transitions framework duringthe 1990s has questioned whether ldquotransition statesrdquo are still actually in aperiod of transition or whether a post-transition framework of analysis isneeded He notes that hybrid regimes that do not fit neatly into typologiesof either authoritarianism or democracy may be stable and enduringpolitical systems so to categorize them as unconsolidated democracies orinstances of unfinished transitions truly is teleological

Regardless of whether one agrees with Cohenrsquos or Carothersrsquos claimstheir critiques draw attention to a question that is vital to scholars seekingto move beyond modernization theory and transitology namely whetherthere are alternative metaphors and analytical frameworks that betterdescribe the processes of post-communist change than the concept ofldquotransitionrdquo While the review of the literature presented here shows thatthe notion that post-communist countries are experiencing transitions iswidely accepted it remains an open questionmdashand a question that somescholars have raisedmdashwhether other frameworks might not provide stu-dents of post-communism with superior analytical insights For instancecould not the processes of change in some post-communist countries beconsidered revolutions institutional collapse followed by state (re)build-ing or decolonization17

Returning to Table 1 it is evident that the notion of post-communistchange as revolution has received a reasonable amount of attention evenif the transitions framework remains dominant Of the 13 articles in thesample surveyed that discuss the concept of post-communist revolutionsmany refer to the violent and explosive events that toppled the Romaniancommunist regime But several scholars most notably Michael McFaulhave argued more broadly that many of the post-communist transitionsshould actually be considered revolutions (see eg Aron 1995 Bunce1999a Bunce 1999b Kis 1998 Kuran 1991 McFaul 1993 McFaul 1995McFaul 1996 McFaul 2002) Bunce (1999b) commenting on this proposi-tion notes that it holistically captures the economic political and socialdimensions of the transformations under way in the former Soviet Unionand Eastern Europe unlike the separate sets of literature on regime changeand economic reform Moreover it emphasizes the role of widespread

17A fascinating counterfactual question would be whether the transition framework wouldhave become the predominant concept of analysis had the Soviet Union collapsed at adifferent time rather than on the heels of the Third Wave of democratization In this respectperhaps the influence of the original transitology literature on post-communist studies canbe seen while as discussed above scholars of post-communism have certainly not basedtheir work directly on the Latin America regime change literature they have inherited theconcept of transition as the guiding metaphor for understanding of the processes they arestudying


conflict and instability during times of economic and political changerather than downplaying these factors in favor of analysis of elite inter-actions (but for some of the drawbacks of a revolutions approach seeBunce 1999a)

A second alternative to the transitions frameworkmdashinstitutionalbreakdown and state collapsemdashhas received much less attention than theconcept of revolutions The notion was first articulated by Jowitt ldquoTheinstitutional breakdownmdasha concept as telling as or more telling than lsquotransi-tionrsquomdashof the Soviet party left its constituent social political and economicparts of the regime weak and fragmentedrdquo (italics added) (Jowitt 1996bp 410) This conceptualization shares with the revolutions framework anemphasis on the disintegration and chaos engendered by the destructionof the old regime it finds affinity with the transformation approach in itsrejection of the image that transition in the post-communist region entailsan intentional and neatly crafted progression from one regime type toanother While Jowittrsquos analysis concludes with a depiction of a post-communist world of disorder and dissolution other scholars have recentlytaken an additional step and theorized the processes of change under wayin the post-communist region as state collapse followed by subsequentstate and market (re)building (see eg Grzymala-Busse and Jones Luong2002 Woodruff 1999 Volkov 2003) This literature criticizes scholars ofpost-communist regime change and economic reform for assuming that afunctioning state continues to exist in places such as Russia and UkraineInstead the inability of national governments in the former Soviet Unionto establish political and economic sovereignty over their domains leadsto fundamentally different processes of transformation than those wit-nessed in the transitions and democratizations of Southern Europe andLatin America (Woodruff 1999 Volkov 2003)18

This formulation of post-communist change as state collapse and state(re)building dovetails nicely with a third potential conceptualizationmdashdecolonization Mark Beissinger and Crawford Young (2002) for examplehave recently argued that Central Asia and the Caucasus display signifi-cant similarities to post-colonial Africa Both are characterized by weakstates exploited by self-serving leaders boundaries laid out by formercolonial overlords and a tendency to resort to violence to resolve politicaland economic disputes

Ultimately there is no reason why these multiple conceptualizationsof post-communist change should be perceived as competitors Mostscholars may continue to contend that the transitions framework bestdescribes the processes of change that have been occurring in East-CentralEurope Meanwhile analysis of state collapse followed by state building

18In general the issue of state weakness remained understudied by scholars of post-commu-nism until recently As Charles Fairbanks notes ldquoThe weakness of the postcommunist stateis important to political scientists because it is the key transition development that we did notforeseerdquo (Fairbanks 2002) The persistent exception has been Stephen Holmes (Holmes1997) who has consistently pointed to the weakness of post-communist states


may yield more fruitful results for scholars focused on Russia and Ukrainewhile the decolonization framework perhaps deserves further attentionamong scholars of Central Asia and the Caucasus Likewise the applica-bility of the revolutions rubric to countries such as Romania and thedistinction between revolutions and transitions more broadly certainlymerit further investigation Sophisticated analysis of post-communism willundoubtedly come to recognize that a region as diverse as the formerEastern Bloc requires a patchwork of guiding metaphors and theoreticalframeworks if scholars are to adequately analyze and comprehend post-communist events19

For scholars continuing to work within the transitions framework thequestion will remain of how to develop a theory of post-communist tran-sitions that moves beyond transitology The review of post-communisttheories of regime change presented in this article demonstrates that thereis widespread agreement among scholars of post-communism with regardto the fundamental building blocks that this new theory might incorporateFirst it must be recognized that a theory of post-communist transitions willnot be a theory of democratization It will be a theory of transition fromstate socialism to many regime types including novel forms of authoritar-ianism enduring hybrid regimes unstable forms of poor capitalism andlow-quality democracy and a handful of regimes that successfully developsustainable liberal democracies (Brown 2000 Bunce 2000 McFaul 2002Roeder 1994) Second a theory of post-communism must capture thecomplexity inherent in the double or triple nature of transitions in theregion From the beginning of the 1990s scholars have recognized that theprocesses of change under way in the former Eastern Bloc entail far moredramatic transformation than the purely political regime change thatoccurred in Southern Europe and Latin America Entire economies arebeing restructured national consciousnesses and in some cases nationalboundaries are being reshaped Scholars will continue to face the challeng-ing task of untangling how these multiple transitions affect each other Forsome this may result in analyses that treat each sphere of transitionindependently yet examine the mutual effects of each sphere on the others(see eg Fish 1998) Others may seek a more holistic approach and developtheories of transition that bring together multiple aspects of transitionssuch as attempts to link both economic and political developments tomodes of privatization (see eg Stark and Bruzst 1998 Schwartz 1999)Third scholars are increasingly coming to realize that fruitful analysis ofpost-communism requires recognition of the weakness and disintegrationof many post-communist states Much of the political science and econom-ics literature on transitions democratization and economic reformassumes that a functioning state exists that discernible lines betweenlegitimate and illegitimate force are in place and that the state wields themonopoly on violence necessary to utilize this force and carry out its

19For a similar perspective see Bunce (1998)


policies As discussed above theorists of institutional breakdown as wellas other analysts have made clear that these assumptions do not hold inthe post-communist region (Bunce 2000 pp 714ndash715 Carothers 2002 pp8ndash9 Jowitt 1996a Jowitt 1996b) What this means for the study of transi-tions must be investigated further Fourth theorists of post-communisttransitions seem especially well poised to make a unique contribution tosynthesizing the competing structural and actor-centric approaches to thestudy of economic political and social change that have been at logger-heads for decades Many theorists of post-communist regime change rec-ognize that the complexity of post-communist events cannot beunderstood without attention to both historical legacies and short-termstrategic human interactions and without emphasis on both domestic andexternal factors How individual theorists will weight these different fac-tors will understandably vary according to the cases in question andanalystsrsquo personal inclinations but few scholars seem devoted to a radi-cally one-sided approach Finally a theory of post-communist transitionswill have to confront the difficult questions pertaining to teleology dis-cussed in the preceding section Here too scholars of post-communism canmake a significant contribution to larger debates The variety and unique-ness of post-communist regimes is fertile ground for exploring novelpolitical and economic systems and this diversity presents the opportunityfor analysts to develop new ways of utilizing ideal types so as to theorizetransition in a non-teleological yet theoretically rigorous manner

Theories of post-communist transitions based on these componentswill undoubtedly display many features unique to the post-communismregion But they will surely be of wider interest to students of transitionsin general As such perhaps they will be a step forward with regard tocreating a field of post-communist studies that is integrated into the largerdiscipline of comparative politics yet which does not induce criticism ofbeing held hostage by proponents of methods and theories derived fromthe study of other regions When this occurs it will be possible to say thatthe field has truly moved beyond modernization theory and transitology

REFERENCES

Aron Leon ldquoRussia Between Revolution and Democracyrdquo Post-Soviet Affairs 11 4305ndash339 OctoberndashDecember 1995

Agh Attila ldquoProcesses of Democratization in the East Central European and BalkanStates Sovereignty-Related Conflicts in the Context of Europeanizationrdquo Communistand Post-Communist Studies 32 3263ndash279 September 1999

Beissinger Mark and Crawford Young eds Beyond State Crisis Post-Colonial Africaand Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective Baltimore MD Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 2002

Bendix Reinhard Nation-Building and Citizenship Studies of Our Changing Social OrderBerkeley CA University of California Press 1977 [1964]


Bernhard Michael ldquoCivil Society After the First Transition Dilemmas of Post-Com-munist Democratization in Poland and Beyondrdquo Communist and Post-CommunistStudies 29 3309ndash330 September 1996

Bernhard Michael ldquoInstitutional Choice After Communism A Critique of TheoryBuilding in an Empirical Wastelandrdquo East European Politics and Societies 14 2316ndash347 Spring 2000

Bibic Adolf ldquoThe Emergence of Pluralism in Sloveniardquo Communist and Post-CommunistStudies 26 4367ndash386 December 1993

Bova Russell ldquoPolitical Dynamics of the Post-Communist Transition A ComparativePerspectiverdquo World Politics 44 1113ndash138 October 1991

Brown Archie ldquoTransnational Influences in the Transition From Communismrdquo Post-Soviet Affairs 16 2177ndash200 AprilndashJune 2000

Bunce Valerie ldquoShould Transitologists Be Groundedrdquo Slavic Review 54 1111ndash127Spring 1995

Bunce Valerie ldquoRegional Differences in Democratization The East Versus the SouthrdquoPost-Soviet Affairs 14 3187ndash211 JulyndashSeptember 1998

Bunce Valerie ldquoLessons of the First Postsocialist Decaderdquo East European Politics andSocieties 13 2236ndash243 Spring 1999a

Bunce Valerie ldquoThe Political Economy of Postsocialismrdquo Slavic Review 58 4756ndash793Winter 1999b

Bunce Valerie ldquoComparative Democratization Big and Bounded GeneralizationsrdquoComparative Political Studies 33 6703ndash734 August 2000

Bunce Valerie ldquoRethinking Recent Democratization Lessons from the PostcommunistExperiencerdquo World Politics 55 2167ndash192 January 2003

Burawoy Michael ldquoTransition Without Transformation Russiarsquos Involutionary Roadto Capitalismrdquo East European Politics and Societies 15 2269ndash290 Summer 2001

Burawoy Michael and Katherine Verdery Uncertain Transition Ethnographies of Changein the Postsocialist World Lanham MD Rowman and Littlefield 1999

Carothers Thomas ldquoThe End of the Transition Paradigmrdquo Journal of Democracy 13 15ndash21 January 2002

Cellarius Barbara A and Caedmon Staddon ldquoEnvironmental Nongovernmental Or-ganizations Civil Society and Democratization in Bulgariardquo East European Politicsand Societies 16 1182ndash222 Winter 2002

Cichok Mark ldquoTransitionalism vs Transnationalism Conflicting Trends in Indepen-dent Latviardquo East European Politics and Societies 16 2446ndash464 Spring 2002

Cohen Stephen F ldquoRussian Studies Without Russiardquo Post-Soviet Affairs 15 137ndash55JanuaryndashMarch 1999

Cohen Stephen F Failed Crusade America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist RussiaNew York NY WW Norton 2000

Collier Ruth Berins Paths Toward Democracy The Working Class and Elites in WesternEurope and South America Cambridge UK and New York NY Cambridge UniversityPress 1999

Crawford Beverly and Arend Lijphart ldquoExplaining Political and Economic Change inPost-Communist Eastern Europe Old Legacies New Institutions HegemonicNorms and International Pressuresrdquo Comparative Political Studies 28 2171ndash199July 1995

Croan Melvin Thomas E Skidmore David Ost Lawrence S Graham and EricHershberg ldquoIs Latin America the Future of Eastern Europe A Symposiumrdquo Prob-lems of Communism 41 344ndash57 MayndashJune 1992


Di Palma Giuseppe To Craft Democracies An Essay on Democratic Transitions BerkeleyCA University of California Press 1990

Di Palma Giuseppe ldquoLegitimation from the Top to Civil Society Politico-CulturalChange in Eastern Europerdquo World Politics 44 149ndash80 October 1991

Ekiert Grzegorz and Jan Kubik ldquoContentious Politics in New Democracies EastGermany Hungary Poland and Slovakia 1989ndash93rdquo World Politics 50 4547ndash581July 1998

Ericson Richard ldquoDoes Russia Have a lsquoMarket Economyrsquordquo East European Politics andSocieties 15 2291ndash319 Summer 2001

Fairbanks Charles H Jr ldquoWeak States and Private Armiesrdquo in Mark R Beissinger andCrawford Young eds Beyond State Crisis Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasiain Comparative Perspective Baltimore MD Johns Hopkins University Press 2002

Fish M Steven ldquoThe Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-CommunistWorldrdquo Eastern European Politics and Societies 12 131ndash78 Winter 1998

Fish M Steven ldquoPostcommunist Subversion Social Science and Democratization inEast Europe and Eurasiardquo Slavic Review 58 4794ndash823 Winter 1999

Frank Andre Gunder ldquoThe Development of Underdevelopmentrdquo in J D CockroftAndre Gunder Frank and Dale L Johnson eds Dependence and UnderdevelopmentThe Political Economy of Latin America Garden City NJ Anchor Books 1972

Friedheim Daniel V ldquoBringing Society Back Into Democratic Transition Theory After1989 Pact Making and Regime Collapserdquo East European Politics and Societies 7 3482ndash512 Fall 1993

Gelman Vladimir ldquoRegime Transition Uncertainty and Prospects for Democratiza-tion The Politics of Russiarsquos Regions in Comparative Perspectiverdquo Europe-AsiaStudies 51 6939ndash956 September 1999

Grzymala-Busse Anna and Pauline Jones Luong ldquoReconceptualizing the State Les-sons from Post-Communismrdquo Politics and Society 30 4529ndash554 December 2002

Held David Anthony McGrew David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton GlobalTransformations Politics Economics and Culture Stanford CA Stanford UniversityPress 1999

Holmes Stephen ldquoWhat Russia Teaches Us Now How Weak States Threaten Free-domrdquo The American Prospect 3330ndash39 JulyndashAugust 1997

Hughes James ldquoSub-National Elites and Post-Communist Transformation in RussiaA Reply to Kryshtanovskaya and Whiterdquo Europe-Asia Studies 49 61017ndash1036 Sep-tember 1997

Huntington Samuel The Third Wave Democratization in the Late Twentieth CenturyNorman OK University of Oklahoma Press 1991

Janos Andrew C Politics and Paradigms Changing Theories of Change in Social ScienceStanford CA Stanford University Press 1986

Janos Andrew C ldquoSocial Science Communism and the Dynamics of PoliticalChangerdquo World Politics 44 181ndash112 October 1991

Janos Andrew C ldquoContinuity and Change in Eastern Europe Strategies of Post-Communist Politicsrdquo East European Politics and Societies 8 11ndash31 Winter 1994

Janos Andrew C ldquoFrom Eastern Empire to Western Hegemony East Central EuropeUnder Two International Regimesrdquo East European Politics and Societies 15 2221ndash249Summer 2001

Jasiewicz Krzysztof ldquoDead Ends and New Beginnings The Quest for a ProceduralRepublic in Polandrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 33 1101ndash122 March2000


Jowitt Ken ldquoThe Leninist Legacyrdquo in I Banac ed Eastern Europe in Revolution IthacaNY Cornell University Press 1992

Jowitt Ken ldquoDizzy With Democracyrdquo Problems of Post-Communism 43 13ndash8 JanuaryndashFebruary 1996a

Jowitt Ken ldquoUndemocratic Past Unnamed Present Undecided Futurerdquo Demokrati-zatsiya 4 3409ndash419 Summer 1996b

Jowitt Ken ldquoChallenging the lsquoCorrectrsquo Linerdquo East European Politics and Societies 12187ndash106 Winter 1998

Karklins Rasma ldquoExplaining Regime Change in the Soviet Unionrdquo Europe-Asia Studies46 129ndash45 1994

Karl Terry Lynn ldquoDilemmas of Democratization in Latin Americardquo Comparative Poli-tics 23 11ndash21 October 1990

Karl Terry Lynn and Philippe C Schmitter ldquoModes of Transition in Latin AmericaSouthern and Eastern Europerdquo International Social Science Journal 43 2269ndash284 May1991

King Charles ldquoPost-Postcommunism Transition Comparison and the End of lsquoEasternEuropersquordquo World Politics 53 1143ndash172 October 2000

Kis Janos ldquoBetween Reform and Revolutionrdquo East European Politics and Societies 122300ndash383 Spring 1998

Kopstein Jeffrey and David A Reilly ldquoGeographic Diffusion and the Transformationof the Poscommunist Worldrdquo World Politics 53 11ndash36 October 2000

Korbonski Andrzej ldquoEast Central Europe on the Eve of the Changeover The Case ofPolandrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 32 2139ndash153 June 1999

Kubicek Paul ldquoPost-Communist Political Studies Ten Years Later Twenty YearsBehindrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 33 3295ndash309 September 2000

Kubicek Paul ldquoCivil Society Trade Unions and Post-Soviet Democratisation Evidencefrom Russia and Ukrainerdquo Europe-Asia Studies 54 4603ndash624 June 2002

Kubik Jan ldquoThe Role of Decentralization and Cultural Revival in Post-CommunistTransformationsrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27 4331ndash355 December1994

Kuran Timur ldquoNow Out of Never The Element of Surprise in the East EuropeanRevolution of 1989rdquo World Politics 44 17ndash48 October 1991

Leff Carol Skalnik ldquoDemocratization and Disintegration in Multinational States TheBreakup of the Communist Federationsrdquo World Politics 51 2205ndash235 January 1999

Lewin Moshe The Gorbachev Phenomenon A Historical Interpretation Berkeley CAUniversity of California Press 1988

Linz Juan J and Alfred Stepan Problems of Democratic Transition and ConsolidationSouthern Europe South America and Post-Communist Europe Baltimore MD JohnsHopkins University Press 1996

Lipset Seymour Martin Political Man The Social Bases of Politics Garden City NJDoubleday 1960

McFaul Michael ldquoRussian Centrism Revolutionary Transitionsrdquo Post-Soviet Affairs 93196ndash222 JulyndashSeptember 1993

McFaul Michael ldquoState Power Institutional Change and the Politics of Privatizationin Russiardquo World Politics 47 2210ndash243 January 1995

McFaul Michael ldquoThe Vanishing Centerrdquo Journal of Democracy 7 290ndash104 April 1996McFaul Michael ldquoThe Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship Noncooperative

Transitions in the Postcommunist Worldrdquo World Politics 54 2212ndash244 January 2002


Mueller John ldquoDemocracy Capitalism and the End of Transitionrdquo in Michael Man-delbaum ed Post-Communism Four Perspectives New York NY Council on ForeignRelations 1996

Munck Gerardo L and Carol Skalnik Leff ldquoModes of Transition and DemocratizationSouth America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspectiverdquo Comparative Poli-tics 29 3343ndash362 April 1997

OrsquoDonnell Guillermo and Philippe C Schmitter Transitions from Authoritarian RuleTentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies Baltimore MD Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1986

OrsquoDonnell Guillermo ldquoIllusions About Consolidationrdquo Journal of Democracy 7 234ndash51 April 1996

OrsquoDonnell Guillermo ldquoIn Partial Defense of an Evanescent Paradigmrdquo Journal ofDemocracy 13 36ndash12 July 2002

ONeil Patrick H ldquoRevolution from Within Institutional Analysis Transitions fromAuthoritarianism and the Case of Hungaryrdquo World Politics 48 4579ndash603 July 1996

Pickel A ldquoTransformation Theory Scientific or Politicalrdquo Communist and Post-Com-munist Studies 35 1105ndash114 March 2002

Pollack Detlef ldquoMass Pressures Elite ResponsesmdashRoots of Democratization The Caseof the GDRrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 35 3305ndash324 September 2002

Pridham Geoffrey ldquoComplying with the European Unions Democratic Conditionali-ty Transnational Party Linkages and Regime Change in Slovakia 1993ndash1998rdquoEurope-Asia Studies 51 71221ndash1244 November 1999

Pridham Geoffrey ldquoThe European Unionrsquos Democratic Conditionality and DomesticPolitics in Slovakia the Meciar and Dzurinda Governments Comparedrdquo Europe-AsiaStudies 54 2203ndash227 March 2002

Pye Lucian W ldquoPolitical Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianismrdquo The AmericanPolitical Science Review 84 13ndash19 March 1990

Przeworski Adam Democracy and the Market Political and Economic Reforms in EasternEurope and Latin America Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press 1991

Reddaway Peter and Dmitri Glinski The Tragedy of Russiarsquos Reforms Market BolshevismAgainst Democracy Washington DC United States Institute of Peace Press 2001

Roeder Philip G ldquoVarieties of Post-Soviet Authoritarian Regimesrdquo Post-Soviet Affairs10 161ndash101 JanuaryndashMarch 1994

Roeder Philip G ldquoPeoples and States After 1989 The Political Costs of IncompleteNational Revolutionsrdquo Slavic Review 58 4854ndash882 Winter 1999

Ross Cameron ldquoFederalism and Democratization in Russiardquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 33 4403ndash420 December 2000

Rostow W W The Stages of Economic Growth A Non-Communist Manifesto CambridgeUK Cambridge University Press 1960

Rustow Dankwart A ldquoTransitions to Democracy Toward a Dynamic Modelrdquo Com-parative Politics 2 3337ndash363 April 1970

Saxonberg Steven and Jonas Linde ldquoBeyond the TransitologyndashArea Studies DebaterdquoProblems of Post-Communism 50 33ndash16 MayndashJune 2003

Schmitter Philippe C with Terry Lynn Karl ldquoThe Conceptual Travels of Transitolo-gists and Consolidologists How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Gordquo SlavicReview 53 1173ndash185 Spring 1994

Schmitter Philippe C and Terry Lynn Karl ldquoFrom an Iron Curtain to a Paper CurtainGrounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunismrdquo Slavic Review 54 4965ndash978 Winter 1995


Schwartz Andrew Harrison ldquoThe Best-Laid Plan Privatization in the Czech Republicrdquounpublished doctoral dissertation University of California Berkeley 1999

Stark David ldquoFrom System Identity to Organizational Diversity Analyzing SocialChange in Eastern Europerdquo Contemporary Sociology 21 3299ndash304 May 1992

Stark David and Laszlo Bruszt Postsocialist Pathways Transforming Politics and Propertyin East Central Europe Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press 1998

Steves F ldquoPoland and the International System External Influences on DemocraticConsolidationrdquo Communist and Post-Communist Studies 34 3339ndash352 September2001

Tedin Kent L ldquoPopular Support for Competitive Elections in the Soviet UnionrdquoComparative Political Studies 27 2241ndash271 July 1994

Terry Sarah Meiklejohn ldquoThinking About Post-Communist Transitions How Differ-ent Are Theyrdquo Slavic Review 52 2333ndash337 Summer 1993

Vassilev Rossen ldquoModernization Theory Revisited The Case of Bulgariardquo East Euro-pean Politics and Societies 13 3566ndash599 Fall 1999

Verdery Katherine What Was Socialism and What Comes Next Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1996

Volkov Vadim Violent Entrepreneurs The Use of Force in the Making of Russian CapitalismIthaca NY Cornell University Press 2003

Wallerstein Immanuel ldquoThe Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist SystemConcepts for Comparative Analysisrdquo Comparative Studies in Society and History 164387ndash415 May 1974

Way Lucan ldquoWeak States and Pluralism The Case of Moldovardquo East European Politicsand Societies 17 3454ndash482 Fall 2003

Waylen Georgina ldquoWomen and Democratization Conceptualizing Gender Relationsin Transition Politicsrdquo World Politics 46 3327ndash354 April 1994

Welsh Helga A ldquoPolitical Transition Processes in Central and Eastern EuroperdquoComparative Politics 26 4379ndash394 July 1994

Wiarda Howard J ldquoSouthern Europe Eastern Europe and Comparative PoliticsTransitology and the Need for New Theoryrdquo Eastern European Politics and Societies15 3485ndash501 Fall 2001

Woodruff David Money Unmade Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism Ithaca NYCornell University Press 1999

Young Christopher ldquoThe Strategy of Political Liberalization A Comparative View ofGorbachevrsquos Reformsrdquo World Politics 45 147ndash65 October 1992

Zhang Baohui ldquoCorporatism Totalitarianism and Transitions to Democracyrdquo Com-parative Political Studies 27 1108ndash136 April 1994


Today a decade and a half after the momentous year of 1989 thereexists a widely repeated assumption that two purportedly related theoret-ical traditionsmdashtransitology and modernization theorymdashhave dominatedand distorted the study of post-communist transitions For instanceStephen Cohen one of the most outspoken critics of what he identifies asldquomainstreamrdquo theories of post-communist transition writes that

Since the early 1990s American scholars of post-communist Russiahave enthusiastically embraced a new guiding concept Some-times known as ldquotransitologyrdquo it should be called ldquotransitionol-ogyrdquo in order to underline all its assumptions and implicationshellipTransitionology has become a near-orthodoxymdashas its proponentstell us the ldquostandard farerdquo the prevailing ldquoorganizing themerdquo theldquoway of posing questionsrdquo (Cohen 2000 p 21)

For Cohen this transitology is little more than a rehashed formulation ofmodernization theory ldquoConcepts and theories of modernization have ofcourse long been a major part of Russian studies And for all its newlanguage and social science pretense transitionology is itself little morethan a latter-day version of those old approaches in the field now equatingmodernization solely with a lsquotransition to democracy and free-marketcapitalismrsquordquo (Cohen 1999 p 48) Other critics concur Peter Reddaway andDmitri Glinski for example argue that ldquothe science of lsquotransitologyrsquo wasanother influential offspring of the modernization paradigmrdquo (Reddawayand Glinski 2001 p 64)

Scholars such as Cohen or Reddaway and Glinski may be among themost forceful critics of what they perceive as dominant trends in the studyof post-communist transitions but they are hardly alone Numerous otherobservers also contend that transitology has exerted an unduemdashandunconstructivemdashinfluence on students of post-communism (see egBunce 2000 Burawoy and Verdery 1999 Carothers 2002 Jowitt 1998Kubicek 2000 Saxonberg and Linde 2003 Terry 1993 Verdery 1996Wiarda 2001) These thinkers charge that transitologistsrsquo faith in the appli-cability to the study of post-communism of theories developed in thecontext of other regions and other historical periods leads to an emphasison inappropriate explanatory variables the development of misguidedresearch agendas and the faulty interpretation of empirical evidenceCritics additionally claim that the transitological approach to the study ofpost-communism is infused with a teleological perspective based on theassumption of a single endpoint to historical progression namely liberaldemocracy (see eg Burawoy and Verdery 1999 p 15 Carothers 2002 p7 Cohen 2000 p 23 Gelman 1999 p 943 Pickel 2002 p 108 Stark 1992p 300) This assumption of linear historical progress further distorts tran-sitologistsrsquo analyses given that regression stagnation or multi-lineartracks of development may better characterize the trajectory of post-com-munist transitions













































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES




























































































































































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES
























































































































































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES




















































































































































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































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48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































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48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































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48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES



























































































































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES























































































































48(48 percent)

18(58 percent)

66(50 percent)


30(30 percent)

9(29 percent)

39(27 percent)


13(13 percent)

9(29 per cent)

22(16 percent)


5(5 percent)

0(0 percent)

5(4 percent)


6(6 percent)

6(19 percent)

12(9 percent)


5(5 percent)

5(16 percent)

10(8 percent)


1(1 percent)

1(3 percent)

2(2 percent)


4(4 percent)

1(13 percent)

8(6 percent)


12(12 percent)

1(3 percent)

13(10 percent)











































































REFERENCES

























































































































































































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Documents

Searching for Transitologists: Contemporary Theories of ...jlg562/... · transitions literature or, alte rnatively, as transitology. 3 First, advocates of transitology argue that,